Why the British still cherish their public service monarchy
What is it that makes Britain so strongly monarchical a nation? Survey evidence indicates that support for the monarchy is, in the words of leading pollster, Sir Robert Worcester, “the most stable measure of public opinion that exists in this country”, fluctuating within an extraordinarily narrow range of 69 per cent to 75 per cent since 1969.
When the Queen came to the throne in 1952, the answer could be found in monarchy’s mystique, which was closely linked to religion. In 1956, one poll showed that 35 per cent believed Her Majesty to have been chosen by God, while Geoffrey Fisher, the thenarchbishop of Canterbury, declared after the Coronation in 1953, that the Commonwealth had on that day been “not far from the Kingdom of Heaven”.
That world has disappeared. The magical monarchy depended on attitudes of deference and respect for authority now gone forever. We live in a more secular and sceptical, perhaps also a more cynical age. So the monarchy must justify itself in practical terms if it is to retain popular consent.
This the Queen has understood. So have the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge. We have moved from the magical monarchy to the public service monarchy.
It is given explicit recognition on the Queen’s website, which declares that an important part of her work “is to support and encourage public and voluntary service”. Today, around 600 organisations in Britain list the Queen as patron or president. The Prince of Wales’s trusts help to train the longterm unemployed and disabled and give financial support and advice to young people starting out in business. Around one million young people have been beneficiaries. Such charitable activity may seem humdrum but is of far greater significance for the future of the monarchy than the more public, ceremonial activities.
Monarchy, therefore, does not need to be defended in mystical or magical terms. There are perfectly rational and, indeed, in my view, unanswerable arguments in favour of it.
Today, monarchy exists primarily in a small number of countries in Western Europe and Scandinavia, whose history is largely free from internal or external upheavals. In such countries, the monarchy symbolises legitimacy and stability, a stability which, paradoxically, makes it easier for radical change to occur. It is no accident that monarchy flourishes in social democracies and that Labour prime ministers – Attlee, Wilson and Blair – have proved such staunch royalists.
Most of us take our stability for granted. But those who have come to Britain to escape tyrannies do not. The grandmother of the journalist Danny Finkelstein, who arrived in Britain as a refugee, used to say that as long as the Queen was safe in Buckingham Palace, she would be safe in Hendon Central.
Having ceded power to elected politicians, the monarchy is able to represent the whole nation to itself, as the Queen has done at the annual Cenotaph Remembrance service and the commemorations of D-day and VE-day. On many other occasions her symbolic impact has been of enormous importance, as when she visited Ireland and admitted that “with the benefit of hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all”, which did much to heal historic wounds; or in her speeches reassuring the nation during the Covid epidemic.
On Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, her last prime minister, Lord Salisbury, said: “When I knew what the Queen thought I knew pretty certainly what view her subjects would take.” Time and again, the Queen has shown that she understands the soul of the British people; and that is the source of the affection which she has inspired throughout her reign, and which culminates in the celebrations marking the Platinum Jubilee.
No longer magical, the Queen still symbolises stability, and she makes it easier to effect radical change